Rainey keys Ledyard on former home court

JOE PEREZ

Sunday

Feb 26, 2012 at 12:01 AMFeb 26, 2012 at 3:02 PM

Scoring a game-high 23 points, including five 3-pointers, John Rainey helped No. 6 Ledyard take a 67-54 victory over No. 3 Stonington in the Eastern Connecticut Conference quarterfinals at St. Bernard School.

Rainey, in his first year at Ledyard, transferred from the St. Bernard School, which hosted the quarterfinals. He certainly looked at home against the Bears.

Scoring a game-high 23 points, including five 3-pointers, Rainey helped Ledyard take a 67-54 victory. It will face No. 2 Waterford at 6 p.m. on Wednesday in the semifinals.

“I was cold at first, and then I came out shooting,” he said. “I just got fired up.”

Stonington (15-6) was playing without one of its better players, Will DeFanti, who is suspended for the remainder of the season for throwing a punch, which allowed Ledyard (16-5) to put pressure on the ball-handler and applied suffocating man-to-man defense. The result was a mix of Stonington turnovers and rushed shots.

A 15-2 run over 6 minutes, 10 seconds that began late in the first quarter staked the Colonels to a 20-9 lead.

“We knew they were minus one of their best ball-handlers, so we wanted to put a little pressure on them, don’t let them get comfortable walking the ball up the court,” said Ledyard coach Dave Cornish. “Just a little token pressure, it wasn’t to trap or anything in the backcourt; we just wanted to let them know we were there.”

With Thomas Whipple (seven points) getting into early foul trouble and Darnay Gray (10 points) not in the flow of the game, Ledyard needed someone to provide offense.

Enter Rainey.

With his team up 11 coming out of the half, the guard scored his team’s first points of the third quarter. When Stonington started to get into a rhythm midway through the third, Rainey drained back-to-back 3-pointers to push the lead to 13.

Jackson Donahue and Tim Ferraro scored 17 points each for the Bears.

“It seemed the whole game, we couldn’t get over the hump at 10,” said Stonington coach Mike Reyes. “We’d have a couple nice possessions, make a couple stops and just (need to) get that one more possession. But you have to give Ledyard credit. They played well.”

Stonington made one last push.

A 13-2 run, capped by an Alex Schroeder 3-pointer with 1:07 left, brought the Bears to within three points. But Ledyard sealed the game at the free-throw line, making 10 in the last 58 seconds. Rainey had six of them.

“He hadn’t gone to the foul line the whole year ...,” Cornish said. “We didn’t know if he could make free throws. We see him making them in practice. John was huge (Saturday). He was huge.”

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